THE FIRST PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
ELECTION FOR VICTORIA'S UPPER HOUSE

The media
in Victoria gave attention to the surprising provisional results of the Upper
House elections, which were later altered to give a confirmed result that
reduced the DLP from 2 seats to 1, and increased the Greens from 2 seats to 3
seats, as was reported on the Victorian Electoral
Commission Web site.

Letter to
the Editor from Dr Lee Naish, Vice-President, PRSAV-T Inc,
in The Age, Page 20, and

a 5-minute interview with the
PRSAV-T Inc. President on ABC Radio, Ballarat, at 8:45 a.m.

THE CASE FOR THE TASMANIAN AND A.C.T. HARE-CLARK SYSTEM, AND
AGAINST ABOVE-THE-LINE VOTING:
The distortions produced by legislatively-prescribed stage-managed
ballot-paper layouts, of which above-the-line voting, with
Group Voting Tickets, is the epitome so far, are graphically
illustrated near the end of an article by PRSA in The
Canberra Times. The point of
that might have been grasped some party members, but their machine operators
would prefer their present powers to influence who gets favoured positions,
even if that limits the party's overall success. At Tasmania's first poll with Robson Rotation, which
is the solution to such distortions, the left-wing party machine's first and
only attempt at issuing a how-to-vote card in State elections flopped
spectacularly after Doug Lowe's ALP Government adopted the opposition private
member's bill for Robson Rotation,
to overcome regimentation of voters, and donkey voting, produced by Neil Robson, MHA
for Bass.

The
classic thorough expose on the damage major parties have
facilitated being done to them by parties such as the DLP is a report "Voting - by Party
Direction or Free Choice" by the
late Dr George Howatt to the Tasmanian Parliament, which ended a move by some
party hacks to introduce Group Voting Tickets there. Tasmania has been
fortunate that how-to-vote cards have not been a feature of State elections,
where parties urge voters to vote for their candidates "in the order of
your choice". Scroll down through it to see the graphs that show why
staged-managed regimentation (of which GVT is the epitome) allowed the
election of the DLP's notorious Senator Vincent Gair, whereas the same party
voting strengths counted by a Hare-Clark system would have not had him, or
any DLP candidate, elected.

SEE BACKGROUND TO
VICTORIA'S NEW PR SYSTEM, AND PRSAV-T INC. PRESS ADVERTISEMENTS BELOW

PR Voting: Now as
easy as 1 to 5

5

For the
Legislative Council you now have a real choice.

2

Voting below-the-line
gives you full control over your vote.

3

Party
operators want you to vote above-the-line.

1

Voting below-the-linehelps the party you prefer elect good candidates.

4

Do you
know where their deals could take your vote?

Just
five preferences are enough for a valid vote.

* At the last Victorian election,
in 2002, the Government party won less than 48% of first preference votes in
each House, yet it disproportionately obtained70.5%of Lower House seats, and 77.3%of the half of the Upper House seats for which
elections were held.

* The Government’s
changes to the electoral law will make the 2006 Upper House outcome much
fairer.

* Article in PRSA Newsletter“Quota Notes” reports on the historic introduction of
proportional representation for the Legislative Council of Victoria.

ABOVE-THE-LINE VOTERS
DISILLUSIONED!

At the last Senate election, many Victorian voters marked a party
box, but later felt hoodwinked. Later preferences on ALP and Democrat ticket
votes led to a Family First candidate being elected instead of the Greens
candidate most supporters would have expected(click on the diagram of the distribution
of Senate preferences revealed at that link to enlarge it). Those
voters might have felt they had little choice but to trust party officials -
given that the below-the-line
option had the quite unreasonable requirement to mark nearly all the boxes.

BELOW-THE-LINE
VOTING IS NOW MUCH EASIER

The new
proportional representation system for Victoria’s Legislative Council
differs from the Senate system. You need to mark only 5 preference boxes for
a below-the-linevote. That means voters for a party may,
but do not have to, mark later boxes for other party’s
candidates. You can now easily and safely choose - in the order you want - as
few as 5 candidates, rather than marking above-the-line. No
errors, gaps or repetitions of numbers above those 5 can invalidate a vote.

Will you let party
officials program your vote, or will you decide it?